Elves

What’s on your Christmas list this year? Well, if your holiday “Must Haves” includes rubbery killer elves, silly Nazi mysticism and a tired Dan Haggerty (TV’s Grizzly Adams) trying to save the world in between drunken naps, then you’re definitely going to want to find Elves shoved into your stocking this season! In this bizarre, low-rent holiday horror spectacle from writer/director Jeffrey Mandel (Cyber-C.H.I.C.), a sassy young woman of the ‘80s named Kirsten discovers that she is the unwitting focus of an evil Nazi experiment from back in the day involving selective breeding and magically murderous elves – yes, it’s the old “Nazis want to create a race of supermen by mating powerfully evil elves with human women” deal. During the Christmas shopping season rush, Kirsten and two of her sassy teen friends are trapped in a department store with a magically-conjured Elf who needs to kill a lot of people and mate with poor Kirsten in order to keep the whole “Nazi Elf Superman” thing going, and only a scraggly Dan Haggerty, as the renegade loose-cannon department store Santa Claus with a serious drinking problem, can save them. Uh oh. Co-starring ’60 sci-fi legend Deanna Lund (TV’s Land of the Giants) as Kristen’s sexy mom, Elves features truly terrible acting, shoddy effects and a brain-damaging script that constantly toggles between recklessly goofy and downright tasteless, thus making it the perfect holiday horror treat. (Dir. by Jeffrey Mandel, 1989, USA, 89 mins., Rated PG-13) Digital